Officials find new cases of foot-and-mouth disease

The Council of Agriculture (COA, 農業會) said yesterday it had discovered fresh cases of foot-and-mouth disease among hogs, dealing a blow to the livestock sector still reeling from a highly contagious epidemic in 1997.

The COA said in a statement that three hogs infected with the fatal disease had been destroyed.

"After examination, we confirmed they were infected with type-O foot-and-mouth disease," the council said in a statement.

"The virus of foot-and-mouth has yet to be eradicated, isolated cases are still possible," it said.

The council said the source of the virus was hog farms in Nantou and Kaohsiung counties.

An inspection of these farms showed no signs of further infections, it added.

Watson Sung, deputy director general of the bureau of animal and plant health inspection and quarantine, said he believed there would not be a major outbreak of the epidemic.

"This is just an isolated incident. We discovered the infection before they were slaughtered, and we immediately quarantined and killed those three pigs," Sung said.

Taiwan has pursued an intensive eradication campaign since the foot-and-mouth disease devastated its hog population in 1997, but isolated cases had been reported from time to time.

The COA had ordered livestock farms to register by the end of last June, as part of efforts to contain any outbreak of the disease.

The 1997 outbreak forced authorities to slaughter a quarter of Taiwan's 14 million pigs and killed what had been a NT$49.6 billion-a-year pork export industry.

The disease is harmless to humans but is fatal in animals.